Here am I
lost in the ashes of
time
but who wants
tomorrow
-Afterglow, INXS
His sister. His playmate when they were young. His comrade at arms. His idea bouncer. His fellow ambassador. His friend.
How she had wanted to go back—it was almost incomprehensible. He remembered her emotion soaked words what seemed like forever ago.
"I told him I would do it."
"What?! You don't have to. No one can make you. Not even Aang."
"He's not making me…it's my decision."
Sokka had felt incredulous that he had asked it of her—and his father? He fought with himself for so long over his father's acceptance of his sister's acceptance. When she told him she had agreed, he felt panic, like she had been trapped.
On the long boat ride there the panic threatened to rise again. His sister was a woman, not a child. Of course she was making her own decisions, decisions he couldn't control or hinder. He desperately tried to understand but felt like he was fumbling in the dark.
After their arrival, amid the preparations and councils and stiffness of royalty, his father seemed to have gained peace through the Fire Lord, whose private musings Sokka had not been privy to. Aang was mostly silent, distant, preoccupied. He had never been bluer (in the truest sense of the word). And his sister…she was preoccupied with him.
He watched them from afar. She was so calm, so calm on the eve of her wedding. The Fire Lord's heir Sokka would never characterize as calm. But he did seem different. The way Zuko watched his sister…he felt no panic and was startled with himself. Then her laughter rang out in pure tones of happiness. Sokka focused on it—hard—before deciding his sister's happiness was worth anything in the world.